


Maybe This Con IS Big Enough for Both of Us?

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Acting, Challenges, Flirting, Gen, Hiatus, On the Grift, Season Tag, Sophie is the Best at What She Does, Summer Vacation, grifters, on the job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 13:58:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16306502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: During a summer break from each other, Sophie returns to her old familiar hunting grounds.  This time, however, her break from the others isn't as clean as she might have hoped.





	Maybe This Con IS Big Enough for Both of Us?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [benjaminrussell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/benjaminrussell/gifts).



> Written from the prompt "Eliot and Sophie grifting together", because HOW COULD I NOT?
> 
> Benjaminrussell, this is for you, with my most heart-felt thanks for your participation in last year's Exchange and my apology that it took me so long to get to post it. I hope in the few days we have left before this year's sign-ups close, you will consider playing with us again!

When you were as peerless on the grift as Sophie Devereaux, there were certain types of cons that ended up being more muscle and sense memory than conscious thought or deed.

This was exactly that sort of con. Her world was glowing marble, a string quartet, and evidence of money – old and new – everywhere she turned. Sophie was a queen moving among her courtiers, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, everything made sense.

“Where is that Devon, anyway?” sighed the blond at her elbow. Glynnis Stanhope and her twin brother Devon, were that rare sort of British nobility where the family debt hadn’t yet had a chance to outstrip the family fortune. The siblings were enjoying the summer in Monaco, although Glynnis had privately confessed to Sophie that their grandmother had them on a – relatively – short financial leash. “She keeps saying that if we need more funds all we have to do is ask, but of course the understanding is that we should make every reasonable move not to have to ask.”

“I swear,” Glynnis went on as they navigated their way through the crowd of people, “ever since those college friends of his turned up I don’t know what has gotten into him!” Her brother had received a note at breakfast three days earlier telling him that a half dozen of his friends from his university days had arrived in country and were looking to recapture at least some of the glory days of their youth. It was a minor wrench in her plans, but variations on a theme had stopped being a problem for Sophie when she was nineteen years old.

“If I know boys like Devon,” she said, making a point of scanning the room, “they will be looking for a spot outside where they can raise their voices without drawing too much attention.” Spotting a set of French doors, she drew Glynnis’ attention to them. “There, I think.”

The closer the two women got to the balcony, the more obvious it was Sophie’s instincts had been dead on. Male voices could be heard – not appreciably boisterous, but loud enough that they would have been obviously disruptive inside the hall. Devon would have prompted the move, Sophie knew. His sister’s disapproving glare aside, the Stanhope heir was a measured, diplomatic sort. He would have known exactly how a clutch of young men drinking and joking with each other would look to a room full of people like this.

It was the same sort of quality that – ironically – made him a perfect mark. “See?” Sophie asked, easing the door open on the very group they were looking for. The young men had retreated as far across the balcony as they could, with Devon at their center.

“He should be inside, showing you off,” Glynnis complained, as Sophie caught Devon’s eye. His expression lit up at the sight of her, and he eagerly motioned for her and Glynnis to join him. Sophie tried to bring Devon’s sister with her, but Glynnis pulled back. “I know where I’m supposed to be,” she said, pulling free of Sophie’s hold. “Try and remind him of his duties.”

Without trying to persuade her to stay, Sophie sailed forward into the small crowd – her best, easiest smile on her face. “My sister is unhappy,” Devon stated, drawing her in against his side and kissing her on the forehead.

“You know she worries,” Sophie demurred, taking in the faces that suddenly surrounded her. They were all cut from similar cloth – handsome, athletic sorts in their late 20’s or early thirties, open eager expressions, troubled by very few thoughts of consequence.

 _All except…._ The one who had positioned himself at her left shoulder, carefully at the edge of her vision, had a familiar spark in his blue eyes that reached out to her from behind his designer framed glasses.

When you were as peerless on the grift as Sophie Devereaux, you learned early on how to avoid reacting to the unexpected. Especially when it took your hand and gently kissed your knuckles.  
******************************************  
She really was the best. Eliot would have expected at least a twitch of one or two facial muscles, a slight widening of the eyes as their gazes met over their joined hands, but there was nothing – nothing that couldn’t be explained away by the liberty he’d taken in kissing her knuckles. “Jasper Billings, beautiful lady,” he said, turning the moment into a bow.

He released her hand as he came up again. “Jaz and I played rugby at Oxford,” Devon said. The mark had moved in behind Sophie, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Only a year before his father called him home to Texas, but he managed to leave his mark.”

Eliot grinned. “I’m not going to take lecturing from you on the pitfalls of family duty, Devon. How is your grandmother, anyway?” It was just enough of a hit to keep Stanhope off balance, keep him from realizing that Eliot was most definitely not the Jasper Billings he’d known in school.

He was a good kid – open and accepting. Eliot was intrigued by the fact that Sophie had tagged him as a mark after months of helping Nate indulge his Robin Hood fetish.

“Texas, hmm?” Sophie asked, and yes – there it was. That slight narrowing of the eyes, the edge of “you better have a damn good reason for showing up here” in her gaze. “Your accent seems to me to be more Oklahoma than true Texas.” Eliot nearly laughed out loud at the subtle confirmation that he had gotten to her.

‘Jaz,” Devon said, stepping to Sophie’s side and taking her hand, “this is my dear friend Eliza Dane. And in case there is any attempt at a misunderstanding between us, please know that my choice of words means exactly what you think it does.”

 _Small, self-satisfied smile as the mark confirms her hold on him…leans into him to reinforce the emotional connection with something physical…_ As he took in everything Sophie was doing, Eliot managed to press a hand to his chest and give Devon a half-bow. “No offense intended old friend. Besides – don’t I remember you having a twin sister who’s currently available?”

Sophie immediately seized on the opening. “I think that’s a _smashing_ idea!” Going up slightly on her toes, she kissed Devon’s cheek. “Besides,” she continued, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “some distraction of her own might do you both some good.”

Remembering Devon’s comment that his sister was ‘upset’, Eliot wasn’t surprised when the Stanhope heir nodded his agreement. “Be nice,” he warned, passing Sophie into Eliot’s care.

She didn’t resist taking his arm as they crossed the balcony back towards the ballroom, but as soon as they were safely out of earshot Eliot felt her nails dig briefly into the meat of his forearm. The brief spike of pain surprised a small snort of laughter out of him. “Watch it…Eliza,” he muttered.

“I’ll kill you,” she muttered. “I’ll kill you, dump your body, and no court in the land will convict me.”

Once they were across the threshold, and the French doors had closed between them and Devon and his friends, Eliot pulled her around to face him. When their eyes met, and he had no doubt it was pure, 100% pissed off Sophie glaring at him, the hitter actually fumbled for a moment – not expecting to miss Nate and the whole motley crew of them as much as he suddenly did.

“Well?” she asked finally, her anger still overriding every other emotion.

Drawing a deep breath, Eliot somehow managed to pull himself together. “Believe it or not, I’m not here to blow your game,” he told her. “Hardison told me you were in Monaco, and it wasn’t hard to pick up that you were on the job once I got here.”

She was starting to look less like she wanted to claw his heart straight of his chest, but Eliot could sense that she wasn’t entirely happy yet either. “You could have figured out a less public way to announce your presence,” she said finally. “You scared ten years off my life!”

Grinning slyly, Eliot took her hand again and raised it to his lips. “Worth every second.”  
*************************************  
He was good. Sophie had picked up on his innate talent for the grift even before Nate had asked her opinion on letting Eliot carry some of the heavier acting responsibilities of their jobs. By the time they had created Adam Sinclair for him, he was at least as comfortable inhabiting another person’s life as Nate. Plus, there was a subtlety to his work that Nate’s often lacked these days.

 _And you managed to successfully gain access to the inner circle of a British nobleman with what had to be a minimum of prep time._ she mentally conceded. “All right,” she sighed, taking his arm again and scanning the ballroom for their target. “You’re going to have to be careful with this one,” she told him in a low voice as they began to make their way through the crowd. “Glynnis isn’t a bad sort, but she’s hyper-aware of the sorts of men her family name is going to attract.”

“As a friend of her brother’s…” Eliot began, but he fell immediately silent at Sophie’s side-long glance.

“You spent how long with that crowd?” she asked him, and he caught her point immediately.

“So what’s my in?” he asked. Still watching the crowd, Sophie finally spotted Glynnis. Discarding her first impulse, she went immediately for the payback as she guided Eliot in the right direction.

“Oh no,” she told him. “You want to play in my world, you work it out for yourself. If she shines you on, you agree to leave Monaco in the morning.”

He was silent for a moment, considering her challenge. “Agreed,” he said. “But,” he added, catching her full attention once more, “if I hook her we work this to the end together.”

Genuinely happy with the turn things had taken, Sophie nodded. “Agreed.”

Glynnis had apparently decided to channel her frustration with her brother into proving that she was the more socially adept of the twins. _So much effort to impress a grandmother who isn’t even here,_ Sophie thought, bringing Eliot with her to the edge of Glynnis’ conversation with one of the white-haired matriarchs who ruled a party like this. This particular ray of sunshine was a British noblewoman whose husband had made his fortune in beer and who counted Elizabeth II of England as one of her closest friends.

“Devon sends his apologies,” Sophie told Glynnis once Lady Tollemache had been distracted by someone of a sufficiently higher rank.

“As well as me,” Eliot interjected, sketching a surprisingly respectful bow. “Jasper Billings, Miss Stanhope. Your brother and I were at university together.”

“The American,” Glynnis said, her eyes narrowing slightly. “We heard the stories.” _And by ‘we’,_ Sophie understood, _she means her and Grandmama._.

Eliot rolled smoothly with the implication. “Boys tasting freedom for the first time can be like badly trained dogs, I’m afraid. Fortunately, I have a patient mother, and a father with a long history of bringing unruly pups to heel.”

It was a polished turn of phrase, and only years of practice kept Sophie from a raised eye. Eliot played the uncultured tough so frequently and so well it was easy to forget he was capable of so much more. _He might even be better than Nate on the grift,_ she thought, her mind drifting a bit as Eliot finally managed to cross that hard, but invisible line Glynnis tended to draw around herself when it came to matters of the opposite sex.

His style was certainly more compatible with hers. 

Sophie blinked, realizing that the focus of the conversation was suddenly on her. “I’m sorry,” she told them, “what did you say?”

Eliot was laughing at her…again. No one else in the room could have recognized it for what it was, but Sophie bristled nonetheless. Glynnis was more earnest, however. “Mr. Billings has requested a dance, Eliza, but I don’t want to leave you here unattended.”

 _Serve you right if I took her up on it,_ Sophie thought, narrowing her eyes slightly and glaring at the hitter. But he’d done well getting the Stanhope daughter to agree to even something as simple sounding as a dance, and in spite of herself Sophie was warming to the idea of having a partner in this. She had missed him – missed all of them, truth be told – and it would be fun seeing exactly what Eliot Spencer was capable of when properly tested. “If you don’t mind, Glynnis,” she said finally, “I think I’m going to find Devon. I suspect you are in good hands with Mr. Billings – or at least he is in good hands with you.”

 _After all,_ she thought, flashing a smile at both of them before walking away, _it’s not like there’s a shortage of prizes to be had at the end of this road._


End file.
